


One for Each Night

by msmorland



Series: One for Each Night [1]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Getting Together, Hanukkah, Holidays, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-20
Packaged: 2018-09-10 18:06:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8926930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/msmorland/pseuds/msmorland
Summary: Someone keeps leaving Eames Hanukkah gifts.
Most of them aren’t in Eames’s size.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I spent an evening reading everyone's delightful holiday fics, and then the idea for this fic landed in my head. Clearly, I have a thing for stories where Arthur or Eames has a secret admirer, because I've now written two such stories, without seeing the now-obvious connection until after I was finished.
> 
> (And I know next to nothing about menswear, so please forgive any inaccuracies.)

Eames returns to his hotel room on the third night of the job to find a wrapped package on his nightstand.

Eames isn’t the one who put it there; he may have his eccentricities, but he isn’t in the habit of wrapping gifts for himself and traveling with them.

He approaches the package slowly. It’s small, and it isn’t ticking, and—underneath the crinkle of the wrapping—it’s soft. If it’s some kind of bomb, it isn’t a kind Eames has ever come across before.

He’s not one to shy away from risk—there’s a reason his totem of choice is a poker chip—so he opens it.

Inside is a tie, neatly rolled, with a tie clip inserted through the center of the roll. It’s not exactly Eames’s style—he can’t even remember the last time he wore a tie outside of a dream—but it does have a glaringly orange and yellow pattern on it. The wrapping paper, he now notices, is also patterned in paisley.

Eames goes to sleep with his gun by the bed and the sense that some unseen person is winking at him. 

* * * 

The next morning at the warehouse, Ariadne wishes Arthur a happy Hanukkah.

“It starts tonight?” asks Sulia, their extractor, looking up from a file Arthur’s handed her.

“Last night,” Arthur says.

“Did you have latkes?” Ariadne asks.

“I love latkes,” Yusuf chimes in from the corner, where he’s busy pouring things from one beaker to another as he mixes a modified Somnacin for the job.

“What is this, twenty questions?” Arthur says. “Why so curious?”

“So that’s a no, then,” Eames says, inserting himself into the conversation.

Arthur rolls his eyes and turns back to his piles of file folders, a clear _leave me alone, I’m working_ signal. 

“Tonight,” says Sulia. “We’re wrapping up work by eight and going out to find Arthur some latkes.”

Arthur rolls his eyes again. Ariadne cheers.

* * *

When 8:15 rolls around, Sulia marches over to Arthur’s desk and stands over him until he takes her hint and stands up.

“This really isn’t necessary,” Arthur says. “I don’t observe the holiday, and besides, someone needs to finish going through the mark’s financial records.” The _and it clearly isn’t going to be any of you_ goes unspoken, but they all hear it anyway.

“The records will still be there tomorrow,” Sulia says, “and we’re comfortably on schedule with this job. Now—Eames?”

Eames, knowing his cue, strolls over to Arthur and stands behind him while he gets ready, then follows him to the door. They’re about evenly matched in a fight—Arthur’s quicker, but Eames is stronger—and Arthur knows better than to try to slip away when Eames is on him.

“Seriously?” Arthur says, but he follows them to the restaurant, answering all of Ariadne’s questions about Hanukkah along the way, and even a person of such restraint as Arthur can’t hide his enjoyment when the waitress sets a plate of latkes with applesauce in front of him.

“It’s been years since I had these,” Arthur tells Eames, while the others are talking around some problem or other with the job.

Eames blinks. It’s not exactly a _personal_ disclosure—Arthur hasn’t said a word about when he had them, or where, or with whom—but it’s as personal as Arthur gets.

* * *

On that fourth night of the job—the second night of Hanukkah—Eames returns to his hotel room after the team’s latke dinner to find another package on his nightstand. This one is a box, and it rattles when Eames shakes it, but not in a dangerous way.

“Huh,” Eames says aloud, even though he’s alone in the room.

At dinner, Arthur had explained to Ariadne that some families give eight presents for Hanukkah, one on each night.

“Huh,” Eames says again, recalling this.

He decides the box probably won’t explode or otherwise attack him, and he opens it.

Inside is a pair of cufflinks.

“Huh,” Eames says, a third time. 

The cufflinks look like poker chips.

* * *

Eames spends the next day trailing the mark on an ordinary day’s business, making notes of points in his routine where they might be able to intercept him for the job. This is Eames’s least favorite part of his work—he’s good at it, at picking up all the little details one needs not to miss on surveillance, but it verges a little too close to methodical for Eames’s taste. It’s more Arthur’s area.

Eames has often thought of asking Arthur to join him on a surveillance day—he’d composed a text just that morning, in fact, a casual _U up for a little surveillance, darling? ;)_ , but he’d deleted it without sending.

Eames knows all the things Arthur would say in response—that he’s too busy, that the surveillance is Eames’s responsibility, that Eames should keep his attention on the job. Their conversations have an element of the routine now, of call and response.

They’ve fallen into a rut, Eames thinks as he strolls casually down a street a safe distance behind the mark. When he’d first met Arthur, Eames had thought all he wanted from him was a shag. They’d fall into bed together, have a fun night or two, and go back to working together without Eames being driven to distraction in every warehouse by the sight of Arthur’s forearms. If Eames were truly lucky, perhaps that initial shag could become some kind of colleagues-with-benefits scenario.

Eames wasn’t sure when he’d first realized he wanted more from Arthur than that, more than something casual and fun, but he’s long past that point now. The things he wants from Arthur these days are truly embarrassing: dinners out together, calling each other at night when they’re working separate jobs and planning to meet up when those jobs are over. He wants to _hang out with Arthur_ while they do surveillance.

But Arthur doesn’t take Eames seriously, and Eames has no idea how to get Arthur to take him seriously.

What he needs, Eames thinks, is to break the stalemate. 

* * *

When he returns to his room that night, Eames is expecting the familiar paisley-paper-wrapped package on the nightstand. He’s added a few extra security measures around the room, but he’s not surprised that whoever’s been leaving these gifts was able to get past them.

This package is a larger box than the previous night’s. Again, there’s no card or tag, though the ribbon is impeccably tied.

Inside the box is a waistcoat. It’s grey and patterned, though in a somewhat quieter pattern than the sort Eames would generally choose for himself.

It’s also not in Eames’s size.

Eames frowns as he adds the box to the small pile he’s started on a chair.

“Hmm,” Eames says. 

* * *

“Have you been looking at any of the surveillance from our hotel, darling?” Eames asks Arthur the next day.

“No,” Arthur says, looking up from his work for the first time all day and frowning briefly at Eames. “We’ve all been taking precautions getting to the warehouse. Do you think you’re being followed?”

“Nothing like that,” Eames says. He lowers his voice and leans in a bit toward Arthur. “Someone’s been leaving things in my room, Arthur."

“What kinds of things?”

“Presents.”  
  
Arthur raises an eyebrow. “Explosive presents?”

“No, just regular presents.”

“So you have a secret admirer and you want me to get the hotel security tape so you can ID them?”

Eames sighs. “Never mind, pet.”

That night, Eames finds a smaller package in his room again. This time, there’s a belt inside.

Eames isn’t the least bit surprised. 

* * *

“I took a look at the tape,” Arthur tells Eames when he gets to the warehouse the next morning. “There hasn’t been anyone unusual on there, so if your secret admirer is coming into the hotel, they’re getting in some other way.”

“Hmm,” Eames says. He’s tired and confused and, for once, he doesn’t even have the energy to banter with Arthur. “Thank you, pet.”

“At your service, Mr. Eames.”

Eames looks up sharply—that’s Eames’s kind of innuendo-laden line, not Arthur’s—but Arthur has already turned away.

Eames takes the opportunity to ogle Arthur’s arse as he walks back to his desk.

He’ll never not have the energy for that.

* * *

That night, there’s a compact shirt box, wrapped, of course, in Eames’s room.

When Eames opens it, he finds a shirt that, like the waistcoat, is patterned but tasteful—and, like the waistcoat, isn’t actually in Eames’s size. He would wonder if the mysterious gift-giver has had the wrong room this whole time, but the paisley wrapping paper and the patterned tie and the poker chip cufflinks all seem like the sorts of things someone might give Eames.

Once again, Eames has the sensation that someone is laughing at him.

He adds the shirt box to his pile and settles back on the bed, hands behind his head and legs crossed, to ponder his two problems, his mysterious Secret Santa and Arthur. The problems aren’t so different, Eames supposes. Whatever signals his Secret Santa—or whatever the Hanukkah equivalent of Secret Santa might be—is sending, Eames is missing. And all the signals Eames is sending to Arthur, Arthur is missing, though intentionally or out of obliviousness, Eames isn’t sure.

So how can he send a clear signal to Arthur? How can he say _I really actually like you_ without being so secondary school as to say _I really actually like you_?

And how can he tell his Secret Santa, _ta ever so much, I’m quite flattered, but I’d much rather have Arthur_?

* * *

Eames wakes in the morning to a present and an idea.

The present is a wrapped shoebox on the floor of his hotel room closet. Eames suspects it was left there the day before, along with the shirt, but that whoever left it knew Eames rarely opens his closets.

The shoes inside are Eames’s size, finally—but he has a feeling that’s a coincidence.

The idea has to do with Arthur, and it’s in Eames’s head when he wakes as if placed there like one of the presents. Eames isn’t surprised—he’s always been a sort of sleep-thinker, able to leave a problem in the back of his mind when he goes to sleep and find a solution there, courtesy of his subconscious, in the morning.

He delights in using this ability to annoy Arthur whenever he gets the opportunity.

This time, though, he hopes it will do the opposite of annoy Arthur.

He has just enough time to make a call before he has to get to the warehouse. 

* * *

That night, Eames leaves the warehouse well before the rest of the team and finds a stationery store he’d passed on one of his days trailing the mark.

Inside, he buys the classiest notecard he can find, a thick cream-colored cardstock with thin grey and black stripes on the back. It screams _Arthur_.

Back at the hotel, after quickly opening and setting aside tonight’s package—a pair of socks patterned in black and white diamonds—Eames chooses a fine handwriting and carefully letters a note:

_You are cordially invited_

_To an evening of Hanukkah celebration_

_At the room of Mr. C. Eames_

_Tomorrow night, 9 p.m._

He adds his room number at the bottom, even though Arthur surely already knows it. Then he breaks into Arthur’s room and leaves the card on the nightstand.

* * *

The next day is another surveillance day, so Eames doesn’t see Arthur at the warehouse. After he’s trailed the mark home with no incidents, Eames hurries to the shops to get a few last things for the evening. 

He’s so busy setting up for Arthur’s arrival, hoping that Arthur will in fact accept his invitation, that he forgets to look for the familiar paisley package on his nightstand. When he remembers, a few minutes before the time he’d given Arthur, Eames plans to grab the package and hide it somewhere out of Arthur’s view.

But when he goes over to his nightstand, there’s nothing there. He checks the chair, but nothing has been added to his pile of gifts. He opens the closet, but there’s nothing new there, either. He checks the bathroom, small hallway, small living room of his suite—nothing.

“Huh,” Eames says aloud.

A tantalizing possibility dances at the edge of Eames’s mind, and he’s maybe just about to grab it when there’s a knock on his door.

In the hallway is Arthur.

He’s holding a garment bag with a giant bow on the front made out of very familiar paisley paper.

“Oh,” Eames says, as the penny drops.

Arthur flushes.

“Aren’t you going to invite me in, Mr. Eames?” Arthur says, holding up Eames’s carefully lettered invitation in the other hand.

Eames is incapable of further speech, but he steps back to allow Arthur to enter.

In the middle of the room, Eames has set up a table with a tablecloth and two steaming plates of latkes with applesauce and sour cream. In the center of the table, Eames has placed a menorah where one might normally put candlesticks. Since it’s the last night of Hanukkah, Eames has lit every candle.

Arthur, seeing Eames’s careful setup, bursts out laughing.

“Not quite the reaction I was going for, darling,” Eames says, recovering his voice.

“Eames,” Arthur says, through his laughter, “that’s not really how menorahs work.”

“Well, how was I supposed to know that?” demands Eames, indignant that his plans for breaking his romantic stalemate with Arthur aren’t going at all as he had imagined.

“And what’s going on with these mystery packages, anyhow?” Eames continues, gaining steam as he thinks about the strange confusion of these last few days, the fact that half of the gifts don’t even fit him, the fact that he’d _asked Arthur to look at the hotel surveillance tapes_ for him, of all things. “Most of them aren’t even my size.”

“Exactly, Mr. Eames,” purrs Arthur.

Arthur, who is thin where Eames is broad, and who regularly wears three-piece suits.

Arthur’s grin is positively wicked.

“Oh,” Eames says again, as another penny drops.

The whole time he’d been scheming to romance Arthur, to convince Arthur that he was completely, 100 percent serious about him … Arthur had also been scheming to romance him?

And doing so, apparently, much more cleverly than Eames had been.

Arthur takes the suit bag into the bathroom and hangs it on the back of the door.

He comes out again and gathers up the pile of boxes and the rolled up belt, tie, and socks that Eames had left on the chair.

“This is hardly fair, darling,” Eames calls after him. He wants to laugh—Arthur got him _Hanukkah gifts_ , of a sort, and Arthur _likes him back_ —but he tries to keep his expression as serious as he can. “You haven’t actually gotten _me_ anything. Those were all gifts for you.”

Arthur pokes his head out of the bathroom, grinning. “I think you’ll feel differently in a moment, Mr. Eames.”

When Arthur emerges again, he’s wearing everything he’d left for Eames: the patterned waistcoat and shirt, the diamond socks, cufflinks that look like poker chips, and a tie that it must absolutely pain Arthur to wear. The suit is tailored just as well as everything else Arthur ever puts on, as Eames finds out when Arthur turns around slowly in front of him, giving Eames a long look up-close at his arse.

When Arthur faces Eames again, he looks a little bit smug, still, but there’s a hesitation in his face, a hint of vulnerability, that he’s never let Eames see before.

Eames is still a bit stunned.

Eames, who normally prides himself on his ability to read people, who thought Arthur was the one missing his signals, has been so busy thinking about his own feelings for Arthur, about how he might be able to change Arthur’s mind, that he’d neglected to give much thought to how Arthur must have been feeling. Maybe Arthur has been trying to show him for a while now.

Eames has seen Arthur do a lot of astonishingly brave things, within dreams and without, but this might be the bravest one yet.

“I’ve changed my mind,” Eames says, decisively. He reaches out to pull Arthur toward him, and Arthur comes willingly. “This is the best gift I’ve ever gotten in my life.”


End file.
